Roberts Lesson 9.6.16

At the start of our lesson, I was asked to conduct a warm-up as if i were alone in a practice room. It was a little uncomfortable at first, because in that moment I was only concerned about doing the "right thing". Then I realized, I was just being asked to do what I usually did in my practice time. There just happened to be another person in the room. So I began to stretch my body from top down to loosen my muscles. Sitting at my desk at work can cause my body to tighten and curl in on itself. Over time, I started to realize how much of a strain it was putting on my singing, so stretching prior to any type of vocalization became a requirement for me. After I felt a little more loose, I started a pitch less lip trill to loosen my lips, cheeks, and focus my breathing. After suffering with asthma for many years, I taught myself to really try to pay attention to my airflow. I took multiple deep breaths to see what type of air I was getting. Either deep, or gaspy, or short. Then I moved to simple lip trills on random pitches to get the voice moving, since I was a little raspy that day. We worked on some vowel placements, and working on the internal "flip" that happens when we jump octaves or larger leaps. We worked on this concept of "air opening the head, and flowing straight through to my hips" The visual that concept gave me helped a lot in feeling that open space in my head. It led to my notes sounding clear, and effortless, with no pulling or tension. I did realize that my jaw is continuing to pull in. It's frustrating that it still happens, but I am glad I can instantly detect when I make the mistake. The first piece of music we looked at was Come Scoglio. We took the first few lines in the Andante section and really struggled through finding patterns, and chunking the words, and their translations. it helped using the piano to have a audio and physical example of what it sounded like. It helped greatly with retention of pitches, rhythms and texts. During my practice time in the upcoming week, ill be sure to pay attention to making sure anything comes out of my mouth feels free, clear, and easy. Continuing to work on my "model behavior" and staying on top of when things don't feel or sound the way they should. And, figuring out how to fix it.